Yes they do, but e.g. Swisscanto apparently doesn’t include the reclaimed WHT in the benchmark, so it looks like the fund is significantly outperforming the index every year. Whereas the others have about the same performance, but adjusted benchmark values, so the (smaller) tracking difference is much more honest.
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Did they specify what tax optimized™ means?
Any chance you get a comment on whether 3a/VB type of funds can generally be considered as “pension funds” in DTAs and thus exempt from WHT (where applicable)?
For which index is that? For EM, aren’t net return (NR) and total return net (TR net) the same thing?
The few I checked, both Swisscanto and UBS sometimes us NR, sometimes TR.
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Thank you both!
To simplify further: if I want to somewhat replicate VT, I think I could consider the Swiss market as negligible (2.10% in VT).
Then it’s a matter of opinion, but maybe getting rid of small caps and EM to end up with just MSCI world ex CH wouldn’t be too bad. And that should minimize fees, since there wouldn’t be any rebalancing necessary, right? So less transaction fees, less currency fees (in the case of Viac)?
I haven’t really checked yet whether this would make sense to bet that much on developing countries high and mid caps vs small caps and EM (and I wouldn’t if I could just get VT or equivalent), but maybe the simplicity of the setup would be worth it in my case.
Actually I asked them if I need to figure out which fund to use because all the suffixes and prefixes are confusing. My question was mainly for WHt. They said that all their funds in 3a accounts are optimised for withholding taxes in foreign jurisdictions (wherever applicable)
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For Finpension, there is no “other fees” … the fees 0.39% includes everything
Ah you’re right. Swisscanto uses MSCI World ex CH “TR Net”, ex-CS “TR” and UBS “div. reinv. US gross, others net” (even though a few lines above they explicitly state that they get back WHT from Japan as well).
Still, they all have almost exactly the same performance. I’d prefer they used the appropriate index to be able to judge the respective tracking error.
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These seem all appropriate, kind of 
- With unrecoverable WHT, NR is a good benchmark. It’s as much as you can hope for
- With no or fully reclaimable taxes, it’s TR = NR
- US gross, others net is creative, but even makes sense if you assume the average investor manages to reclaim US WHT by herself, but doesn’t bother about JP or CA.
Of course they did 
It’s not answering my question, but I guess that’s as good as you’ll get from a customer rep. or a fund’s homepage.
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The key problem would be that your exposure to US stocks would be almost 74% if you just use MSCI world ex CH
If your assets outside 3a can balance this , then it’s fine. But just be aware of this fact
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I don’t understand, funds should always indicate total returns irrespective of them being acc. or distr., no?
VT is 62.30% for comparison: Vanguard Mutual Fund Profile | Vanguard
It’s true that it’s quite a big difference, thanks for the tip!
What part of your overall equity assets is your 3a? If it is 10-20%, then the 10% of that is 1-2% difference in overall equity allocation. Then decide how much time should you spend on this decision.
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Just did a quick comparison of 2 of 3 EM funds offered by Finpension, return differences seem enormous:
- Swisscanto EM, CH0117044971, tracking MSCI EM TR Net
- UBS EM, CH0252809717, tracking MSCI EM net div. reinv.
Is this due to different indexes again? AI tells me these are the same indexes:
Also found return data of Finpensions exCS(now UBS) fund CH0017844686. Similar performance (5y) to UBS, but minus the infamous redemption spread of now 1.6%
Yes because VT is different index.
Which tool do you use for this?
It’s www.swissfunddata.ch .
The only unrestricted-access one I found so far providing the data I’ve been looking for.
In the factsheets of the respective funds you do get the total returns. They are not helpful if you want to compare performance from a starting date like the launching date of a fund.
The Vitainvest performance shown in Getquin does not show total total return because it does not take reinvested dividends into account.
UBS is terrible with Indexfunds (other than on the Swiss Market). They just don‘t know how to do it and their performance sucks. You need to compare the former CS fund with the Swisscanto one - and pray that UBS learns from CS, because CS was the best Index Fund Provider so far, clearly beating Swisscanto.
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Unfortunately, I’ve compared exCS EM (CH0017844686) to Swisscanto EM (CH0117044971), and exCS seems as bad performance-wise as UBS.
However, this may be due to different indexes, happy to get corrected on this!
I find it really challenging to compare 3a funds for lack of tools and the use of different indexes
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No guarantee, but the American stock market has consistently outperformed the European one by 2 % and Emerging markets have always underperformed.
It might not.
I’ve just done a simple calculation for my own case and the total cost of the mortgage including opportunity cost from being forced into an overpriced 3a.
Assumptions:
Mortgage: CHF 710’000
Interest rate: 0.9 %
Duration: 10 years
Amortization through 3a: 1000 CHF per month
Interest cost over 10 years: 710’000 * 0.9% * 10 = CHF 63’900
Interest cost after tax (30 % marginal tax rate on average): CHF 44’730
Performance over 10 years → Total amount after 10 years (not adjusted for inflation)
Fund 1: 7.45 % → CHF 176’123
Fund 2: 9.45 % → CHF 195’681
Difference in performance: CHF 19’558
Basically, we would have had an equivalent amount of money if the interest rate for the mortage had been 1.3 % instead of 0.9 %.
So, maybe going with a different provider that charges a bit more interest but accepts Finpension as a 3a provider is worth it in many cases.
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Without going into the calculations, why would any bank accept your 3a (for downpayment and /or amortisation) outside its own products?
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